"The son of a bitch."
"She'd been gagged with her own panty hose, a big knot stuffed in her mouth. Kind of odd, don't you think?"
"To keep her quiet," I said, and then I said, "Oh. Right."
"Yeah," Hammond said. "Let's say in four cases out of five the guy who takes the time to pull someone's nails out before he closes the door for good wants to learn something. And if the person whose nails he's removing wants to say something, he's not going to be able to understand her with a big knot of nylon in her mouth, is he?"
"He did it for fun."
"There was probably nothing on TV. But then he goes and tosses her house. So maybe there was something he wanted to learn."
"No," I said. "I think he did it for fun. I think he already knew whatever it was, or he wouldn't have killed her. I think he held off killing her until he was sure about what she knew."
"Then why take the house apart?"
"To find out if she'd told anyone else. Think about what they took, Al."
"Girl's hands were a mess," Hammond said. "You get any closer to the man, let me know. I'd like an introduction. He had such a good time that he jerked off on her before he left. Ten-four," he said, knowing I hated it. He hung up.
"Ten-four," I said automatically as my mind tried briefly to reject the last thing Hammond had told me. Thinking very hard about Needle-nose, I looked up into the eyes of Dexter Smif.
"Ol' Broderick Crawford always said that," Dexter said. "Ten-four. Like it mean something. How come the man can't say good-bye?"
"He couldn't get his upper lip down far enough for the B." I wanted to get up and out of the house, to work off a little unwholesome energy before focusing on the day.
"Lotta cops do that. Look like they tryin' to give they teeth a tan."
I pushed Needle-nose from my mind's eye and an image of Merryman floated in to take his place. "If you were a doctor," I said, "why would you go into religion?"
"This detective work?"
"No," I said. "It's the fevered questioning of a philosophical mind."
"Right, be nasty. Some lady been killed apparently, but be nasty. Take refuge in philosphy. Okay, me too. Nothin' comes from nothin', right? I'd say he's after a little less nothin'. "
"Money."
"Why does anybody go into religion? I mean, unless they soul in peril. Most folks, they soul in peril, they the last one gone to know. Look at all those dildos in the three-piece suits and the dry-cleaned hair preachin' on the TV. All they worried about is the cost per thousand. It's the good folks worry about they soul."
"There's a sucker reborn every minute," I said.
"And they all got they dollar-fifty to send in every three days. From then on it's all multiplication. Be fruitful and multiply. 'Cept I don't think that's what it supposed to mean."
"So how do you trace a doctor?"
"Ask a doctor."
"Good idea." I picked up the phone and started to dial.
My friend Bernie picked up the phone on the third ring. Outside, the rain used the roof for a kettle drum. "Wo, listen to that," Dexter said. Have to go out through the valley."
"Bernie," I said. "How's Joyce?"
"Okay," Bernie said. "She's on call at the hospital."
"What are you doing?"
"Studying." Bernie was always studying. He was the only person I knew who had more degrees than I did, and he still couldn't bring himself to leave school.
"Can I buy you guys dinner?"
"Anybody can buy me dinner. But I don't know about Joyce. She thawed something before she went to work."
"Thawed something."
"I think it's lasagna. It's usually lasagna. Joyce cooks a boxcar full of lasagna and cuts the thing into one-foot squares and then freezes them. Our freezer flies the Italian flag."
"Well, then, how about I come over for dinner?"
"Listen to that," Dexter said. "Man invites himself."
"Like I said, I'll have to ask Joyce," Bernie said. "I don't know why there should be a problem. A square foot of lasagna is a lot of lasagna."
"It sounds like a lot of lasagna."
"It's good lasagna, though," Bernie said defensively. "Joyce makes a terrific lasagna."
"I'll bring the wine."
"Red," Bernie said. "I'm sick of Frascati."
Dexter picked up my doodle pad and wrote something on it. He waved languidly at me and headed for the door.
"I'm going to want to talk to Joyce," I said. "Will she mind?"
"Depends on what you want to talk about," Bernie said.
"See you," Dexter called. "Check the pad."
"Thanks for getting the cat," I said.
"Joyce likes cats," Bernie said. Then he said, "What have cats got to do with anything?"
"Nothing much. Seven o'clock fine?" Dexter pulled the door closed and went down the hill, whistling.
"Fine. Unless Joyce can't make it. Is this about cats?"
"No," I said. "It's about doctors. See you at seven."
I hung up and went to the kitchen to dump my cup in the sink. On the doodle pad Dexter had written dexter smif.
555-0091.CONSIDERIN' ABOUT A CAREER CHANGE.
Chapter 16
Mrs. Yount's pendulous lower lip trembled. So did the paper cup in her hand. The cup, courtesy of McDonald's, said fresh coffee but the aroma was pure Jack Daniel's.
"I can't believe she's gone," Mrs. Yount said. "I always knew she'd come home. And now she won't."
Mrs. Yount's living room was in its usual state of chaos. Clothes were piled about eight inches thick on the carpet, if there was a carpet. An old, worn fur coat was spread out in front of the TV, which was tuned to a daytime show about the turbulent emotional lives of doctors and nurses. Two yolk-spattered plates, the refuse of Mrs. Yount's significant breakfast, littered the coat's shedding collar. Outside, a waist-high wall of empty whiskey bottles dripped water around Mrs. Yount's pathetic little garden. Mrs. Yount didn't like to throw her dead soldiers away. The trashmen might talk. Instead, she stacked them neatly inside the cinder-block wall that surrounded her scraggly patio.
"I should of felt something," she said. "Wouldn't you think I'd of felt something if she was dead?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "There couldn't have been any pain, the man said. She ran right under the truck, and it was over."
The lip trembled again. I was terrified that she'd begin to cry. "I guess that's something," she said. "He was a nice man?"
"Very nice. He felt terrible."
"What kind of truck?"
I wasn't ready for the question. "A beer truck. Making a delivery to the grocery."
"Fluffy liked beer. I gave her a little saucerful just before bed. She drank Anchor Steam."
"She had good taste," I said idiotically. "I drink it myself sometimes."
"Would you like one?"
"No," I said. "That's all right."
Mrs. Yount raised her paper cup to her lips and started to swallow, but then she made a sputtering noise and drops of whiskey spattered the crumpled clothes at her feet. A fat tear squeezed itself loose from her eye. "Oh, dear," she said. "Oh, dear… oh, dear."
"Please, Mrs. Yount," I said.
"What am I to do?" She looked at the television screen and the tears flowed down. "She was only three. What am I to do?"
"You'll be fine." I reached out and patted her arm.
She looked down at my hand and then heavily up at me, and there was a little click behind her eyes and the old Mrs. Yount was back. "A lot you know, mister," she said. "Go away. Send me a bill." She waved me away and picked up an empty Jack Daniel's bottle. Without turning back, she tottered toward the back door to add it to the wall of empties. "Just send me a bill, mister, that's all." The glass door to the patio slid open with a squeal that started a dog howling somewhere.
I left without saying anything about the leak in the roof.
In the high and palmy days of Hollywood glamour the place had called itself the Borzoi, and it had offered temporary and very expensive shelter to various Huntingtons, Hartfords, Sepulvedas, and Doheneys, not to mention a clutch of Barrymores. The Californians came there when the fires of autumn razed the elegant homes on the hillsides and when their wives were suing them for divorce, and the Barrymores when they were desperate enough for money to desert the adoring audiences of New York and hop the Twentieth Century for the three-day trip to Los Angeles. All day they'd labor in silence in the converted barns on Gower and Sunset, letting their famous voices go to waste and loathing themselves for pandering to a vulgar new medium, and at night they'd return to the Borzoi in their long white limousines to enjoy the fruits of their labors. They seldom took much money back to New York.